A graduate in visual arts from Sejong University in South Korea, Hyun Joung Lee creates ink-based works inspired by childhood memories and imagined landscapes. Replacing a single horizon line with a multitude of sinuous, parallel lines, her compositions evoke waves, mountains, or geological strata.
Their abstract nature invites open interpretation, beyond scale or reference, where the blank spaces of the paper are active, echoing the Taoist concept of fullness and emptiness.
Drawn in rhythm with her body, the lines recall tidal patterns or musical staves. They suggest breath, a cyclical journey — what the Greeks called aiôn. The artist seeks to transcend her personal story to reach a more universal resonance.
Lee primarily uses blue or black ink on hanji, traditional Korean paper made from mulberry pulp. This textured, irregular support carries memory: fiber fragments, traces of gesture, echoes of a transmitted past. She embraces its material and symbolic richness, also referencing the traditional bojagi technique — a protective Korean patchwork passed down through generations.
As a child, she already imagined landscapes from the damp stains on the hanji that lined the floors of her home. Today, she continues this poetic exploration, blending abstraction, memory, and universal resonance.
